I stepped outside. Twilight. A dense fog shrouded everything, the fuzzy outline of the Shack barely visible an arm’s length away. Facing away from us, the cottony silhouettes of Wyatt and Jeanne in work pants and shirtsleeves balanced on the slanted tin. I caught snatches of their conversation: they were bickering about the best way to repair the satellite dish that had toppled over, its supporting strut snapped in half.
Clutching the rope that joined the two buildings, I took off toward the bay and the Dome through veils of shimmering ice crystals. Chilly vapor snaked off the crusty snow, encircling my waist. It had to be close to sixty degrees. Unable to see my feet, I unzipped my jacket and took up an awkward run. Sigrid’s arms stayed tight around my neck, her small body bouncing against my back.
I unzipped the heavy canvas of the Dome and burst inside.
Curly hair sticking up crazily, Raj faced the diving hole as he struggled to work the thick rubber sleeves of his diving suit up his arms. He whipped around to face me.
“Val, help me with this!”
A sick, electric panic vibrated in the moisture-laden air. Raj grappled with the many zippers, unable to get a grip with his shaking hands. I slid Sigrid into a chair, where she slumped into unconsciousness, tossed a blanket over her, and ran to him.
“Where’s Nora?”
“Oh God, Val! We built this special weighted trap and sent it down—the line broke, so she dove down to check on it. Her line’s been cut, or it’s caught on something. She’s not answering—help me with this!”
I wrestled with the main zipper; it was tangled in the fabric it was sewn to.
“Just force it—”
“I don’t want to tear it—”
“Christ, she’s down there—”
With a yelp, I unzipped it with all my strength—freeing it—then zipped it all the way across his chest. He grabbed his hood and snapped it over his head. “Put on the emergency suit, Val, I’ll need—”
“I can’t dive—”
“Put it on!” He clutched my arm, fixed me with bloodshot eyes. “You don’t have to dive, just get the suit on.” He jammed on his flippers with two loud thwaps. “I need someone to shine a light for me when I’m down there. Keep your head above water.”
“Why don’t I just shine the light—”
He unhooked the suit from the struts and threw it to the floor. It looked like a dead sea creature. “Put it on!”
“But, Raj—”
“Nora’s going to die, do you understand? Put it on!” He heaved his oxygen tank over his shoulders.
Feet first, I battled with the bottom half of the suit, breathlessly reciting the diving steps as each was completed, methodically and too slowly, until Raj took over and we raced through them, ending with the heavy tank, which nearly knocked me backward. For a moment, we stared at each other through our goggles, absolute terror in his eyes. I felt numb.
He dropped into the hole, then bobbed up, reaching to grab a blocky flashlight that emitted a strong beam of blinking red light. “There’s just forty minutes left in the tanks. Watch my safety line. As soon as I go under, get in and hold this light down as deep as you can. Don’t move until I get back, understand?”
Without waiting for an answer, he sank down into the fizzing blue hole. Bubbles belched up; the surface flattened. His safety line, a neon-orange rubber cord, jerked from slack to taut. I fit the regulator in my mouth and practiced breathing through it as I watched the seconds tick down. Removed it.
I sat at the edge of the hole, legs dangling in the icy slush. Gave Sigrid one last glance—she’d curled into a tight ball on her chair—and pushed off.
Instant oblivion.
Weighed down by the tank, my head and shoulders dropped underwater—not my plan. A numbing blast smacked my face, the merest bite of oxygen in my lungs barely kept there by pursed lips. My legs like two logs as I tried to kick my way to the surface, red rubber hands grappling for the edge of the ice hole. The lamp above it a smear of rippling yellow.
I caught hold of Raj’s line and popped my head and shoulders clear of the water with a shout.
Scrambling for the blinking flashlight, I plunged it into the depths and held it as steady as I could, now fighting my own buoyancy. Cold sank its teeth into the flesh of my legs, crawled up my arms, crushed my chest.
At the three-minute-and-twenty-second mark, Raj’s safety line suddenly took on a life of its own, snapping from one side of the hole to the other as if it were a fishing line hooked with an immense fish. As if something had gotten hold of him.